The King of Fighters XIII/Meter Management

Contents

Meter Management

When first learning KOFXIII players may experiment to find simple combos, drive cancels, and HD combos through experimentation. The combo system is rather flexible which leads to a spectrum of simple to complex combos with varying damage, meter, spacing, and followup options. Perhaps the most important concept to grasp is optimizing every combo to meet a players needs. First, we'll examine a crude and ineffective combo.

Here we see Kyo comboing into his df.D command normal and canceling it into his neomax DM from midscreen. This deals over 50% of the opponent's lifebar but leaves much to be desired:

First, Kyo had a full hyperdrive meter and could have canceled the second hit of his df.D into HD mode and continued the combo. This allows a Kyo player to carry the opponent into the corner and use the remaining time in HD mode for a highly-damaging corner combo. Even without using any super meter, the Kyo player could do about as much damage from using the entire hyperdrive bar for HD cancels.

Secondly, the player could increase the total combo damage by using the previously malused meter for DMs or EX specials which cost less meter.

Third, neomaxes tend to leave both players at a neutral situation but both simple and HD combos can be ended in numerous ways to give the Kyo player a stronger okizeme game after the combo.

And finally if one method deals excess damage to the dying player, the Kyo player should use a simpler combo perhaps using a drive cancel to conserve future hyperdrive (and possibly super) meter for the next round.

An easy way to avoid this issue is to practice the combos found on each character's wiki page and the ones found in Trial Mode. From there, players should begin to get a feel for how a character's combos flow and end, and then extend or condense meter usage to finish off a character or set up for an advantageous reset or knockdown.